The death of traditional file names and directories
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Jim Crafton wrote:
And honestly, with all the horsepower that a modern PC has, couldn't we come up with something easier?
Would adding metadata actually be any easier? You need some way of adding the semantic information for the file to the raw data - adding in the human interpretation of that data. File path, metadata - it all takes human effort - can't (with current (software) technologies) be done mechanistically IMO. I would love to be proven wrong, however :-)
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Stuart Dootson wrote:
can't (with current (software) technologies) be done mechanistically IMO.
There are some articles on CP and another that Joe mentions (further down) that suggest otherwise. I find it difficult to believe that some basic, though still really useful, analysis can't be done at this point in time.
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Stuart Dootson wrote:
can't (with current (software) technologies) be done mechanistically IMO.
There are some articles on CP and another that Joe mentions (further down) that suggest otherwise. I find it difficult to believe that some basic, though still really useful, analysis can't be done at this point in time.
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The items of useful automatic analysis I've seen personally:
- Named facial recognition in iPhoto (I'm sure it's in other photo cataloguers as well - iPhoto's the one I use, though) - works pretty well, but relies on a pretty big corpus of previous, (mostly manually) marked up photos. Still pretty impressive
- Search engines (Google, obviously, and Spotlight).
Other than that, not so much
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
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The items of useful automatic analysis I've seen personally:
- Named facial recognition in iPhoto (I'm sure it's in other photo cataloguers as well - iPhoto's the one I use, though) - works pretty well, but relies on a pretty big corpus of previous, (mostly manually) marked up photos. Still pretty impressive
- Search engines (Google, obviously, and Spotlight).
Other than that, not so much
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
Stuart Dootson wrote:
Spotlight
Stuart Dootson wrote:
iPhoto
Seconded! I did not expect the iPhoto facial recognition to work that well. Spotlight of course is a lot better than anything in the windows world.
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Heck no! At least not on my system. I don't care what crutches other people need. It's bad enough they allow SPACEs in names, and don't get me started on case-sensitivity! :mad:
modified on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 5:20 PM
soyouprefertoreadnameswithoutspaces.
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In 2009 why do we bother with directory names and traditional file names any more? What would be some alternative ways of organizing things? I was wondering about this because my sister-in-law, people I know at work, and even my parents often struggle with remembering what a file is called, giving poorly chosen names to files and then being unable to find them quickly, and so on. I'm sure others here have had to help family members, or maybe even co-workers find "misplaced" files. Yet one of the things I thought was cool about a Palm Pilot was that you never worried about files, or where things were stored. Why can't this be applied to a PC OS? Why not use a combination of things? Something like tagging to add descriptive bits, a UI that has alphabetic index, like a book. Given that NTFS has many of the features in place to do something like this (Alternate Data Streams would be a perfect place to store meta data, tags, etc) how hard would it be to write something that might accomplish this? What other things would be nice to have?
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Jim Crafton wrote:
giving poorly chosen names to files
I think that's more of a problem than the traditional file/directory structure.
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Jim Crafton wrote:
how hard would it be to write something that might accomplish this?
Well WinFS started long time back and was eventually abandoned. So it might be quite hard.
I'm glad that I read through this thread before posting. That's pretty much what I was going to say.
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
because you then rely on him to supply the identity directly
If you rely 100% on the user I'd agree, but with the processing power that we have, couldn't the OS examine the file and generate some initial meta data? For example I'm sure there are AI projects out there that can scan a text file and give you some clues to it's content. Is it a legal document? Is it a letter? Etc, etc. Ditto for pictures, there's a article here that uses some AI techniques to identify pictures by high level concepts, i.e. a picture of a bird or a cat.
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Jim Crafton wrote:
sure there are AI projects out there that can scan a text file and give you some clues to it's content
Yeah, but they always end up being domain-specific. They need a hint to get started, or some way to constrain the problem space. They also need to do it efficiently enough and accurately enough to be useful, which are probably the real tricks here. There's always simple brute force methods of matching parts of the text to a mass of categorized data (wikipedia, for example), but these are expensive in time and storage.
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
because you then rely on him to supply the identity directly
If you rely 100% on the user I'd agree, but with the processing power that we have, couldn't the OS examine the file and generate some initial meta data? For example I'm sure there are AI projects out there that can scan a text file and give you some clues to it's content. Is it a legal document? Is it a letter? Etc, etc. Ditto for pictures, there's a article here that uses some AI techniques to identify pictures by high level concepts, i.e. a picture of a bird or a cat.
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But isn't that pretty much what the Wondows indexing system does? For any file type it knows about, it keeps an index so you can search for it - so you don't need to add tags (although meaningful file names help) If the search engine was just a little more user friendly (you could easily specify you're looking for a word document with "resign" and "dickhead" in it, or a picture taken around this date (obviously, indexing of images could potentially use techniques mentioned elsewhere to attempt classification, ut getting users to add tags when they're saved would be the best thing - and the default windows method leaves a little to be desired.
___________________________________________ .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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soyouprefertoreadnameswithoutspaces.
ABSOLUTELY_I_DO.YES
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In 2009 why do we bother with directory names and traditional file names any more? What would be some alternative ways of organizing things? I was wondering about this because my sister-in-law, people I know at work, and even my parents often struggle with remembering what a file is called, giving poorly chosen names to files and then being unable to find them quickly, and so on. I'm sure others here have had to help family members, or maybe even co-workers find "misplaced" files. Yet one of the things I thought was cool about a Palm Pilot was that you never worried about files, or where things were stored. Why can't this be applied to a PC OS? Why not use a combination of things? Something like tagging to add descriptive bits, a UI that has alphabetic index, like a book. Given that NTFS has many of the features in place to do something like this (Alternate Data Streams would be a perfect place to store meta data, tags, etc) how hard would it be to write something that might accomplish this? What other things would be nice to have?
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You're not getting much support here.... I think what you're talking about is the future though, and currently we use things like google desktop to sift through our files - even if you have a good directory structure and name files sensibly you still forget where things are. I think the index you're talking about is the index inside a search facility like google desktop and this index(ing) is becoming more intelligent all the time, e.g. indexing images from their actual content, music files from their music genre, etc. I think directories and filenames will definitely become secondary in the future (and are already) as search becomes more comprehensive and search will become less about search and more about the normal way to interact with your personal data.
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In 2009 why do we bother with directory names and traditional file names any more? What would be some alternative ways of organizing things? I was wondering about this because my sister-in-law, people I know at work, and even my parents often struggle with remembering what a file is called, giving poorly chosen names to files and then being unable to find them quickly, and so on. I'm sure others here have had to help family members, or maybe even co-workers find "misplaced" files. Yet one of the things I thought was cool about a Palm Pilot was that you never worried about files, or where things were stored. Why can't this be applied to a PC OS? Why not use a combination of things? Something like tagging to add descriptive bits, a UI that has alphabetic index, like a book. Given that NTFS has many of the features in place to do something like this (Alternate Data Streams would be a perfect place to store meta data, tags, etc) how hard would it be to write something that might accomplish this? What other things would be nice to have?
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There seem to be 2 problems with describing files (via tags, or names, or what have you). 1) Computers (read: artificial intelligence) tend not to describe things the way we do. A person who already posted gave the example that the computer might see a picture as "the beach" but we would search for it as "the beach with the waves". 2) Most users are too lazy to give descriptions to their files. If they are not diligent up front, they might not be able to find their files later. I'm going to say right off the bat that AI is difficult, so solving #1 is no easy task. However, #2 may be somewhat simpler. Documents don't have to be tagged, as they are filled with searchable content. Most other typical user content is media (songs, pictures, videos). Somebody could create an app that allows tagging of files in a leisurely manner (tags could be attached to the file using that alternate data stream thingy NTFS has). It could be integrated with many existing apps. It could show you a picture or video and say "describe this picture/video". You would then type in "that fun day at the beach with waves" and move on to whatever you were doing. Audio could work the same (although I think people tend to name/tag audio better, or it is already named/tagged when bought from, say, iTunes). Whenever you are playing music, there could be a little popup in the corner of the screen that says "what is unique about this song" or "what is the name of this song". And integrating it into different apps gives the user ample opportunity to describe their files. For example, it could be part of a screensaver; the only way to get out of the screensaver would be to type in a description for the currently displayed picture. Or it could be integrated into different search applications. When you find something you are looking for, you might be shown a list of all previous search terms you used to find the file and you might be asked to select which of those appropriately describe the file you want to open. People might not mind this little break from whatever else they are doing on their computer. Heck, they might even enjoy seeing old memories (pictures) every now and then. And if it's done in a non-obtrusive way, the user wouldn't mind having this feature.
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Stuart Dootson wrote:
can't (with current (software) technologies) be done mechanistically IMO.
There are some articles on CP and another that Joe mentions (further down) that suggest otherwise. I find it difficult to believe that some basic, though still really useful, analysis can't be done at this point in time.
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Even so, I hope no OS would be able to guess the contents of encrypted tax returns I keep on my disks :laugh:
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In 2009 why do we bother with directory names and traditional file names any more? What would be some alternative ways of organizing things? I was wondering about this because my sister-in-law, people I know at work, and even my parents often struggle with remembering what a file is called, giving poorly chosen names to files and then being unable to find them quickly, and so on. I'm sure others here have had to help family members, or maybe even co-workers find "misplaced" files. Yet one of the things I thought was cool about a Palm Pilot was that you never worried about files, or where things were stored. Why can't this be applied to a PC OS? Why not use a combination of things? Something like tagging to add descriptive bits, a UI that has alphabetic index, like a book. Given that NTFS has many of the features in place to do something like this (Alternate Data Streams would be a perfect place to store meta data, tags, etc) how hard would it be to write something that might accomplish this? What other things would be nice to have?
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Companies should bother about this first - then provide it to users. But as long as most of users are way more conservative than OS developer companies - this will not go live soon. We can see how developers create new product - users love it and buy it - developers get revenue and grow. Once company grow too much - it starts making stupid things (like Windows Vista). This is all followed by changing user's preferences. It is business - so once developers feel that fileless system will give them good money - they'll create that.
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Jim Crafton wrote:
how hard would it be to write something that might accomplish this?
Well WinFS started long time back and was eventually abandoned. So it might be quite hard.
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Jim Crafton wrote:
f-stop, aperture, dimensions, DPI
And that's helpful how? I can just see my wife thinking; where's that picture of the kids at the beach? I remember it used F/4 at ISO 100...
Or, you just get with the program and buy a mac - iPhoto now automatically recognises people and so you can just ask it to find all the photos containing uncle jim (of course, you won't get any photos of his back that way...) Actually, good search is the key - once you have that then you've got the keywords included automatically.
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Or, you do what I do and a) copy all files from the camera into a folder with the date the copy was made (i.e. 2009_07_01) and b) rename the good pictures with the date, who is in them and where it's at. (Automatic index results would be interesting. I wonder how it would index the pictures of my kids at the beach [in San Diego a month ago] since the beach isn't in several of the pictures. Moreover, there were multiple beaches. Even then I'm not sure it's a help. To my wife, the two main beaches were "The Hotel Beach" and "The Other One." To me, they were "The Bahia Beach" and "Pacific Beach." To my kids they were "The Boring Beach" and "The one with the waves.")
modified on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 4:33 PM
That's pretty much what I do as well - though I've recently started geotagging* photos now, so I can locate ones specific to a particular area visually using online mapping if I need to (that's the theory anyway - in practice Flickr's mapping is a bit lacking). I also tend to add a text file with more details of the contents of each picture in the same folder. * I use a TrackStick II[^] for the automated stuff and GeoSetter[^] for manual positioning. I suspect that's a topic for another discussion, though!
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In 2009 why do we bother with directory names and traditional file names any more? What would be some alternative ways of organizing things? I was wondering about this because my sister-in-law, people I know at work, and even my parents often struggle with remembering what a file is called, giving poorly chosen names to files and then being unable to find them quickly, and so on. I'm sure others here have had to help family members, or maybe even co-workers find "misplaced" files. Yet one of the things I thought was cool about a Palm Pilot was that you never worried about files, or where things were stored. Why can't this be applied to a PC OS? Why not use a combination of things? Something like tagging to add descriptive bits, a UI that has alphabetic index, like a book. Given that NTFS has many of the features in place to do something like this (Alternate Data Streams would be a perfect place to store meta data, tags, etc) how hard would it be to write something that might accomplish this? What other things would be nice to have?
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If you put this back into the real world for a moment imagine that you dump a load of random documents, photos and other files on a desk, then employ a maid to come along and clear it all up for you. The maid isn't necessarily going to have any idea about who you are or what you do, so they're not going to do a particularly great job at organising it and you're going to have no idea as to where they put it. As the self-balancing binary tree teaches us, if you want to find something there's no better way to do so than to organise yourself first.
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Stuart Dootson wrote:
can't (with current (software) technologies) be done mechanistically IMO.
There are some articles on CP and another that Joe mentions (further down) that suggest otherwise. I find it difficult to believe that some basic, though still really useful, analysis can't be done at this point in time.
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And even without advanced analysis, a lot can be done. The OS already saves the date when a file was created/edited - which could be used to sort results by date or to search for files that were stored at a certain date. File types are also trivial to determine. It could save some more info, like which application created it, or which website a file was downloaded from, or where it was copied from (usb stick / digital camera / ...). Some file formats have their own information tags as well, for example, an mp3 file knows the album and author - things a good search engine could work on. I agree with you, Jim. Naming files and putting them in the right folders shouldn't be necessary. Even though there are people that organize their files, there are far more which don't. And it would be great if we didn't have to.
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Or, you do what I do and a) copy all files from the camera into a folder with the date the copy was made (i.e. 2009_07_01) and b) rename the good pictures with the date, who is in them and where it's at. (Automatic index results would be interesting. I wonder how it would index the pictures of my kids at the beach [in San Diego a month ago] since the beach isn't in several of the pictures. Moreover, there were multiple beaches. Even then I'm not sure it's a help. To my wife, the two main beaches were "The Hotel Beach" and "The Other One." To me, they were "The Bahia Beach" and "Pacific Beach." To my kids they were "The Boring Beach" and "The one with the waves.")
modified on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 4:33 PM
@Joe Hey, about picture tagging, forget about dates as folder names and do yourself a favor: install Picasa from Google. This little programm will perform the search for you. In a future version, it may get face recognition, so no more name-tagging.
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In 2009 why do we bother with directory names and traditional file names any more? What would be some alternative ways of organizing things? I was wondering about this because my sister-in-law, people I know at work, and even my parents often struggle with remembering what a file is called, giving poorly chosen names to files and then being unable to find them quickly, and so on. I'm sure others here have had to help family members, or maybe even co-workers find "misplaced" files. Yet one of the things I thought was cool about a Palm Pilot was that you never worried about files, or where things were stored. Why can't this be applied to a PC OS? Why not use a combination of things? Something like tagging to add descriptive bits, a UI that has alphabetic index, like a book. Given that NTFS has many of the features in place to do something like this (Alternate Data Streams would be a perfect place to store meta data, tags, etc) how hard would it be to write something that might accomplish this? What other things would be nice to have?
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@Jim You could install Windows Vista. It has an integrated search engine. Just click the orb, type in your tags and click on the right file. Doesn't this work for you ? For photos, use Picasa from Google. It is free. They are making a mac version of it now.